Books: Times Eight

The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain

I really don't know what the big deal about "The Notorious Jumping Frog" is, but there's a lot of good stuff in here, mostly satire that you wouldn't expect to travel well, but does. Recommended.

1001 Things it Means to be a Dad by Harry H. Harrison Jr.

We're not currently pregnant, but I thought I'd pick this up anyway. While often trite and/or reinforcing of traditional gender roles and/or way too religious for me, there were also a handful of "Things" that I suspect I'll find useful. Like, "You're their friend, but you're their dad first."

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross

Bob Howard is a sysadmin for a government agency. This would be soul-sucking enough, but he also occasionally has to deal with things that actually suck souls, like, say, Cthulhu. Littered with pop culture references only a geek would get and fun action scenes, this is a book I should have read sooner. Highly recommended.

Operation Red Jericho by Joshua Mowll

A "young adult" pulp adventure novel about two siblings whose parents have gone missing in Western China, so they are foisted from relative to relative until they end up on their uncle's Q-ship, the Expedient. At this point they get involved in a hidden war with a Chinese tong over the superexplosive known as "zoridium".
While the main characters are, frankly, brats, this book steals its way into my heart because of its fold-out maps and diagrams of hidden fortresses and revolutionary submersibles. It's like a Tom Swift novel, if the Tom Swift novels had included blueprints and full-color illustrations. If you're as much of a sucker as I am for that sort of thing, highly recommended.

Runaways: Dead Wrong by Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos

This latest adventure of Marvel's team of teen superheroes was pretty good, but would have been much better if the dramatic ending hadn't been used, in exactly the same form, in Young Avengers: Family Matters. Dammit. Still, recommended.

The Thin Man, Little, Big, and The Stainless Steel Rat

Since my to-read pile was actually down to about 12" for a while there, I actually got a chance to read books I've read before. Crazy, huh? Thin Man is a classic 1930s detective story, even better than the (very good) movie that was made from it. But Nick and Nora sure do drink a lot. Little, Big is a fairy story set (mostly) in an urban dystopian future. It meanders a lot, the ending is weak, and there are too darn many red herrings, but the picture it paints of the Drinkwater family and their huge, multi-faced house plucks at the cockles of my heart in just the right way. The Stainless Steel Rat is an SF comedy-thriller about a criminal who goes to work for the government bringing in other criminals. I liked it better when I was younger, but it still kept me off the streets and out of trouble for a few hours.